Securing Community Land And Resource Rights In Africa

This collection of research papers from across the African continent illustrates the complex and ever-changing rules of the land tenure game, and how government legislation and reform (formalization) interact with local innovations (informalization) to form land tenure systems.

This book provides a significant contribution to the literature on land reform in various African contexts. While the economic evidence is clear that secure property rights are a necessary condition for catalysing broad-based economic development, the governance process by which those rights are secured is less clear. This book details the historical complexity of land rights and the importance of understanding this history in the process of trying to improve tenure security. Through a combination of single country case studies, comparative case studies and regional comparisons, the book is unequivocal that good governance is paramount for improving the performance of land reform programmes. All attempts at moving towards more formal secure tenure require congruence with informal norms, beliefs and values, and a set of clear systems and processes to avoid corruption and unintended negative consequences.

This is the first book on land administration and reform in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is highly relevant to all developing countries around the world. It provides simple practical steps to turn the hugely controversial subject of "land grabs� into a development opportunity by improving land governance to reduce the risks of dispossessing poor landholders while ensuring mutually beneficial investors’ deals. The book shows how Sub Saharan Africa can leverage its abundant and highly valuable natural resources to eradicate poverty by improving land governance through a ten point program to scale up policy reforms and investments at a cost of USD 4.5 billion. The book points out formidable challenges to implementation including high vulnerability to land grabbing and expropriation with poor compensation as about 90 percent of rural lands in Sub Saharan Africa are undocumented, but also timely opportunities since high commodity prices and investor interest in large scale agriculture have increased land values and returns to investing in land administration. It argues that success in implementation will require participation of many players including Pan-African organizations, Sub Saharan Africa governments, the private sector, civil society and development partners; but that ultimate success will depend on the political will of Sub Saharan Africa governments to move forward with comprehensive policy reforms and on concerted support by the international development community. Its rigorous analysis of land governance issues, yet down-to-earth solutions, are a reflection of Byamugisha's more than 20 years of global experience in land reform and administration especially in Asia and Africa. This volume will be of great interest to and relevant for a wide audience interested in African development, global studies in land, and natural resource management.

This report details the communities' various experiences undertaking the land documentation activities and summarizes the initial impacts of these efforts under the following subject headings: conflict resolution and prevention (encompassing boundary harmonization and demarcation); intra-community governance (encompassing by-laws/constitution drafting); and conservation and sustainable natural resources management (encompassing land and natural resource management plan drafting). It then briefly reviews the obstacles confronted relative to the administrative components of the process. The report next outlines findings relative to the optimal level of legal intervention necessary to support communities' successful completion of community land documentation processes as well as what endogenous factors may impact a community's success. The report then details findings concerning how best to facilitate intra-community protections for the rights of women and other vulnerable groups during the land documentation process. It concludes by setting forth findings and recommendations intended to inform policy dialogue, help nations to refine and improve the implementation of existing community land documentation processes, and provide useful insights for countries seeking to develop laws and policies for community land documentation. One central finding is that the community land documentation process is a valuable opportunity to resolve local land conflicts. Governments and civil society actors should leverage the process to support communities to address inter- and intracommunity land disputes, which may undermine perceived tenure security and foster local or regional unrest. A second central finding is that while the data and observations from Liberia and Uganda indicate significant changes in the study communities resulting from community land documentation efforts, in Mozambique very little change was noted. The primary difference between the processes followed was the inclusion in Liberia and Uganda of extended, iterative, and participatory processes of cataloguing, debating and adopting community by-laws/constitutions and plans for natural resources management. The research indicates that the community by-laws/constitution-drafting process was likely the primary driver of many of these impacts. Under this analysis, it becomes clear that governments and civil society actors should structure community land documentation processes to proactively address intra-community governance, with special emphasis on leveraging the process to: ! Improve community land administration and management; ! Create mechanisms to hold leaders downwardly accountable to their constituents; ! Strengthen and protect the rights of women and other vulnerable groups; ! Foster conservation and sustainable natural resources use; ! Align community norms and practices with national law; and ! Promote local-level democracy. The report also concludes that community land documentation may be a more efficient method of land protection than individual and family titling, and should be prioritized in the short term.